The Life and Times of Jeff Squyres

January 2003 Archives

January 4, 2003

Rebuilding

A few days ago, I upgraded my web server. I carefully had all my MP3s and JeffJournal data on a separate partition (/home) from the operating system. However, somehow, during the upgrade process, about half the files in /home disappeared. Yep -- they just up and disappeared.

I'm guessing that it's because I upgraded from MDK 7.1 to MDK 9.0, and the home filesystem was resiserfs. Specifically: I'm guessing that it wasn't the OS upgrade that caused it to get hosed, it was the filesystem upgrade that caused it to get hosed.

Either way, I lost all my mailing lists and all my JeffJournal data.

Fortunately, I got all the data back from friends who still had it in their inboxes and other places. I'm therefore now in the process of rebuilding.

I also lost all the JeffJournal custom software. This isn't a major tragedy, since it was really only "adequate" at best. It had a few nice features, but it really wasn't anything special. So I scouted around and discovered a nice system named Moveable Type. It seems to have a lot of nice features, so I think I'll go with it.

Now off to investigate the "import" features of MT to figure out how to import all my old entries...

Linksys killed me

The Day of Hell.

Trying to get MS Messenger to work with shared apps this morning (yet again), I noticed that there was a bug in my Linksys cable router/WAP/switch thingy -- there was a problem on one of the web pages for trigger ports -- and I noticed on linksys.com that the next rev of firmware fixed this exact problem. So I downloaded and went through the install procedure, and BAM! It stopped responding about 1/3 of the way trough.

ARRRGGGGHHHH!!!!!

Needless to say, it was catatonic -- wouldn't respond to anything. I called tech support and went through their checklist, and sure enough -- it's dead. Of course the RMA folks are out until Monday. So I eventually went out and bought a D-Link router/WAP/switch. After a few false starts, I got it working and it seems pretty great (and $60 cheaper than the Linksys!). Seems to have a lot more functionality than the Linksys, too. We'll see how this goes.

January 5, 2003

All is well.

I think I have all my old journal entries imported now. I had to do a little editing (and got to fix a few old typos in the process), and a whole bunch of perl coding, but I eventually got it to go. Woo hoo!

Needless to say -- I'm fairly pleased that I didn't end up losing 2.5 years of blog entries. First entry was on 12 July, 2002. There have been 314 entries since then. That's a lot of typing.

I miss some of my old shortcuts that I had with jjc, though. I'll have to look and see if there's a way to get some of those back. MoveableType is many, many lines of dense perl code; the prospect of diving through it does not thrill me. I also need a way to automatically mail out new entries to subscribers. There's built-in functionality to manually do that, but it's not quite what I want (e.g., mail is not sent as HTML, have to do it manually, etc.).

We'll have to see what happens (i.e., how inspired I get :-)).

I should add that M&D got their ReplayTV working just fine (after a few false starts) and seem to be enjoying it. Yummy!

Excuse me, let me through please. I'm with the DJ.

Tracy and I tried to see the second Harry Potter movie at a matinee today. It was sold out! We hardly expected this since it was a 4pm matinee and it's been out for several weeks already. Doh!

So we went to see Two Weeks Notice instead. A cute flick, hardly surprising at all, with no twists and turns, explosions, terrorists threating to blow up the world, ghastly-looking aliens invading the earth (or its remote colonies), but still a cute flick. 7.5 minutes.

January 9, 2003

So I got my new

So I got my new (RMA'ed) linksys today. Anyone want one? I'll sell it -- cheap. It's actually a fine unit -- it just doesn't do what I need. And don't try to upgrade the firmware. :-)

My D-Link router is nicer in almost all regards, except that it has 2 problems -- one minor, one major:

1. Minor: the DHCP lease times for linux boxen seem to be really weird. The dhcpcd.log file complains of infinite lease times, and the router shows the lease as expiring in 2016. This doesn't really matter at all, but it should probably be fixed.

2. Major: the wireless activity on the WAP periodically just goes catatonic. Resetting the router (either via the web control panel on a wired connection, or power cycling it) makes it come back. But that's kinda useless if you're working via wireless. :-)

I called D-Link about these issues, and they had me submit technical details on #1, and told me that they're working on #2. We'll see what happens.

January 19, 2003

They belong together like H and 2 O

We had an OSCAR working group meeting at IU this week.

My tenure as the chair of the group is now over (it was a one year elected position). Woo hoo! Freedom! :-)

Actually, it was a good position, and I enjoyed it. And I think I got a lot done. But it took a lot of time, and now I really need to be able to focus on my dissertation. And that means spending less time on OSCAR.

The meeting was good. We talked/argued/yelled/compromised/came up with good solutions. It always fun and rewarding to work with other technical people on complex problems that require difficult solutions and lots of brain work. Good stuff.

I spent far too much of today debugging GNU Automake's depcomp script. Ugh. I typyed up a lengthy / detailed bug report, but http://sources.redhat.com/ has been giving "Connection Refused" since yesterday afternoon.

At some point, I really need to edit the journal page templates to make them how I want them. I also need to make it send out mail upon new entries. I also need to make millions of dollarts. I also need to conquer the world. I also need to...

What is this thing "homies" that you speak of?

Oy. We cleaned and organized our basement all day today. We went from piles and piles of junk to a somewhat-more-organized, slightly-more-clean piles of junk on shelves (heavy duty prefab shelves from Home Depot). And it takes up far less space, now that they're on shelves. Woo hoo!

I've got most of my OSCAR coding done. It seems to be working, but I ran into a bug which looks like it's in SIS. I posted to the devel list and am waiting back to hear from the SIS guys.

In other coding news, I ran into a bug with GNU Automake's depcomp this weekend (and spent far too much time on it). It has to do with generating automatic code dependencies on Solaris when using libtool. How's that for a special case? I've been trying to submit a bug report to sources.redhat.com, but it's been refusing connections all weekend. :-(

January 21, 2003

What is this thing "trees" that you speak of?

Brian and I decided on the final feature list for LAM 7 today. Target is May 2003. Damn the torpedoes, LAMming speed!

Tom hosted his first OSCAR meeting today. Most excellent. :-)

I found out why sources.redhat.com was refusing connections -- they changed their IP address. Doh!

Perk's journal is working again.

Tracy and I gave Eileen a Tivo in return for all of her generosity (I stay in her spare bedroom when I vist Bloomies). She was thrilled beyond words (literally) -- a truly classic reaction. She randomly spontaneously yelled "I LOVE TIVO!" over the next 36 hours.

January 26, 2003

So Dave is... Canadian?

Saw the latest Harry Potter movie yesterday. The thearer wasn't quite packed, but it was quite full. Good flick, but a little slow in the middle. Still, I overall enjoyed it. 7.5 minutes.

Mortguage rates are going down down down. Might be time to refinance.

The LAM 6.5.9 release is still not out the door yet. It's being a PITA; we keep finding minor buglets that force yet another release candidate, etc. Hopefully, we're getting close.

I spent 2 days at my army unit last week doing PKI stuff (Public Key Infrastructure, the initiative to get the entire DoD on a common unclassified digital signature/encryption standard). I now have a new CAC and card reader at my home to do experimentation and whatnot with. We have to field this stuff to our entire division by 1 Oct 2003. That will be, er, a challenge, if you know what I mean. On a positive note, though, it's neat stuff, and even with all of its shortcomings, is a good idea and will [eventually] have a positive impact on how the Army (and the entire DoD) does business. Also, I got to preach the Gospel of IMAP/SSL to USARC (US Army Reserve Command); for various reasons not worth going into here, USARC may implement IMAP/SSL across the entire Reserves because of PKI. That could be way cool!

You should never have shown me that office linebacker video. It is such a fantasy piece for people frustrated with the decline of modern life. When I was flying out here there was the normal thing of people cutting line to get on the plane, or standing right in front of the door, waiting for their row to be called and blocking people who had been called. Or people with way too much baggage trying to force it in an overhead, etc.

I was just wishing so much for the office linebacker.

BLAM! ONLY ONE CARRY ON AND ONE PERSONAL ITEM! DOUG!

BLAM! WE'RE ONLY BOARDING ROWS 25 AND HIGHER! WAYNE!

Was up at IU for three days this week to do a bunch of stuff and give a seminar talk on LAM/MPI on Thursday (which went well). Did lots of SSI coding while I was up there, and drummed up more interesting LAM. Woo hoo!

The mini-llamas (i.e., all the students doing work on LAM) are doing good work -- it's great to see lots of positive progress being made. They've all suffered minor setbacks here and there (e.g., misunderstanding what LAM does what they need to do for their projects), but that's to be expected because LAM is so huge and there's so much to understand. I'm just thrilled that there are now so many people working on LAM, and I can actually see tangible results from their work. Woo hoo!